Comments by "Bruce Tucker" (@brucetucker4847) on "Henry Stewart History" channel.

And the whole time the German general staff, who alone in all of Europe actually wanted a general war to break out, were urging their counterparts in Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia in order to avoid looking week, and telling them to ignore anything anyone including the German Kaiser said about trying to keep peace. They were the real architects of the war.
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@MaxRoth-mc6nb Let me guess: the "you know hews," amirite? The British government desperately tried to defuse the crisis and stop the war from becoming general, but the Germans torpedoed every attempt to resolve the conflict through diplomacy. The German generals wanted war, now, while they still had a narrowing demographic and economic advantage over France and Russia, and they were determined to do everything they possibly could to see that no one was able to prevent it starting.
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This is extremely deceiving on several points. The biggest is the notion that Germany "decided" to attack France after France and Russia had declared war. This is complete nonsense. Germany had decided to attack France more than a decade earlier. It was automatic, all the mobilization plans were made, if there was war with Russia, Germany would attack France no matter what France did or didn't do. In fact the Kaiser, understandably worried about the prospect of fighting a two-front war, wanted to explore diplomatic measures to try to keep France neutral, and there were signs France was open to such approaches, but the German General Staff, the real rulers of Germany when it came to military matters, refused point blank. The plan DEMANDED an attack on France, the plan was too massive and complicated to change on the fly, therefore France would be attacked. The plan also demanded that the attack be made through Belgium, so Belgium would be attacked unless it just surrendered itself to German occupation. And that is how and why a local crisis in southeastern Europe turned into a general war between all the great powers.
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@weybye91 Kaiser Wilhelm's generals actively sabotaged every attempt he made to resolve the crisis diplomatically or to limit the war. When he was cabling Vienna asking them to moderate their response to Serbia's response to the ultimatum, his generals were cabling General Conrad von Hotzendorf (the Austrian chief of staff) telling him to make sure the government ignored everything Wilhelm was saying.
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